INGARDEN'S REALISM

In his attempt to analyze the problem of realism, Ingarden started from the Husserlian distinction between the world and 'pure consciousness'. Nevertheless, he rejected all the ontological - or rather metaphysical - features attributed to consciousness by Husserl, while at the same time he was convinced of the indubitability of our knowledge of the basic characteristics of it as a sort of being existent inside the human person. If he had resigned from this epistemological feature of a privileged access, he would have had to grant that we do not need to seek a proof of the existence of the world at all. Other ways in which Ingarden tried to elucidate the problem of being - in the first place the problem of human nature - led him to the sphere of free persons. Understanding our knowledge of this sphere demands an understanding of the human senses in a dynamic and holistic way and the acceptance of a personal model of the world as the basis of our knowledge. The 'primary data' of our experience are, in fact, human persons; they are the paradigm of independent being and full realism means accepting them as similar to us, as free creatures.